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Courtney on the trail
The Grand Canyon in Some Not-So-Grand Weather
Last night we kept waking up to rain and hail pelting the roof of our RV. The miserable weather continued into day three of our trip. We sat in the RV most of the morning watching hail fall and snow flurries. Finally we decided that we weren’t going to sit around anymore and packed up to go see the canyon.
We took a shuttle bus to a lookout point, called Mather Point, along the south rim trail. We were greeted with some breathtaking views, the ones that make the long drive in a cramped RV all worth it. There were even a few breaks in the clouds and the rock formations were even more beautiful with sunbeams dancing off of them. From Mather Point, we hiked west along the south rim toward Yavapai Point. This destination gave us more spectacular views and a small geology museum, where we took refuge for about 30 minutes.
Nicholas and Eisley peer out at the canyon
After resting up we decided to keep hiking west toward a bus stop along the trail. However, about half-way into the last leg of our hike, we were greeted by severe hail and snow flurries. The temperature also seemed to drop about 20 degrees. At this point we had two choices: turn back toward the museum or press on. We decided to press on, which was probably a mistake. The kids were cold and getting colder. Everett was screaming his lungs out and we were getting strange looks from the few hikers also braving the elements (“why do you have your kids out in this mess?” we could hear them thinking).
We survived the cold and finally made it to a shuttle stop. From there, we headed to a nearby restaurant and warmed up with some central heat and hot chocolate. After getting our body temperatures back up, we headed back to the RV to drop a few things off, then caught another shuttle to the visitor’s center. It was there that we saw a short educational film about the canyon.
A rock formation that we spotted along the way
After the movie, we headed back to our campsite and called it a night. We can only hope for better weather on the rest of our journey.
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